Frayed Thread
by Empress of Trash
Summary: Thread and strings of fate exist all around the world. The Norns. The Fates. The Red String. Weavers create the art of the world at their loom. Asagao is a thread that doesn't belong. Frayed and weaved slightly wrong into the world. She knows because this is her second life. And slowly she begins to recognize the world in which she lives. Civilian!SI-OC, OC-insert, Self-Insert


**0**

It had started with dreams, quiet drifting things that interrupted her peace. She was able to ignore them at first, sink into the gentle darkness that waited for her. It was a kind nothingness, holding her in a shielding embrace. It chased away the Thoughts that came sometimes. The Memories that her start to panic to feel acid burning in her throat and a stinging deep gaping wound ripping slowly through her. It covered the scars inside her. It was the bandage that protected them while they healed.

Even the darkness could not keep out the dreams. Quiet whispers called to her. A strained female voice slowly digging into her like a cat's claws catching on a shirt, thin and needle sharp. They were prayers, she realized with a start. She listened to the musical rise and fall of the woman's voice trying to understand the song of it. What desperate plea did she make so often?

She knew the prayer was not for her. She simply heard it as it passed through the darkness towards its destination. The prayer was noise pollution in her peace.

Instead of nothingness she had sound and from that sound words and from those words a lack of meaning and from this lack she grew thoughts. Thoughts such as she had never had.

(Or at least she could no longer remember them.)

She was no longer sleeping. She was waking and her waking mind looked onto the incomprehensible prayer.

Finally her eyes peeked into the darkness and found nothing.

The darkness still holding her tightly seemed _amused_. It allowed her to catch her senses and begin waking thought undisturbed by sleep, though Memories were still locked away. She was the core of herself and that core was focused on the stranger's voice that was grief tight.

The darkness held itself back, waiting.

She waited as well, but when the prayers grew too desperate, too frantic her patience ended. She took a step towards the voice.

The darkness shuddered and committed another first.

 _Do you wish to know its source?_ A voice that was both no one and everyone, high and low, feminine and masculine and inbetween and nothing all together spoke. It was soothing, much like the darkness itself.

She spoke her first word then feeling the pain in the voice and wanting it to end. "Yes."

Her voice surprised her. It was a lovely mezzo-soprano with a soft drawl to it. Her scars had made her assume she would hate her voice. The shape of one scar felt like self-hatred. Under the rasp though was something she enjoyed.

 _Very well._ The darkness responded.

She burned. It was the only way to describe it. She went from nothingness to color, sound, light, sensation, taste, smell. She was being bombarded and it took her moments to make sense of the chaos.

It was a cool fall day, she could feel the wind dancing against her uncovered skin, buffered back by her thick clothes though. In between the bits of cold were tantalizing moments of warm as the sun shone down caressing her cheek. The soft whistle of it through the trees, causing the leaves around her to fall and dance was musical to her ears. She could feel the silk and cotton rub against her skin as her eyes were looking down and she saw a glimpse of the dark purple it was almost black cloth dotted with small white patterns of feathers wrapping gracefully around her hips and down the edge. It was a _kimono_ , something that wasn't the darkness told her. It felt like a buried knowledge. In front of her were three small statues, each round and small enough to fit in her hand. They were a blue-gray stone, put had small colorful bibs and clothes wrapped around them as if to shield them from the cold. At their base were colorful arrays of flowers first lilies, the irises, and then asters. There were little bits of colorful cloth, food, and even a small toy. But what stood out, what her eyes kept going over again and again were the small hand knitted white blankets with names and small flowers sewn into their faceup corner.

 _Yuri, Ayame,_ and _Shion_ the all said though she wasn't sure how she understood what the names meant as she didn't recognize the lettering. Reading over them brought a deep gaping hole inside her to the surface. It made her bleed and her eyes burn. She felt her throat give a throb of grief she wanted to voice as a scream a desperate cry, but she stayed silent. Only inside did her deep grief and longing call out.

 _A child please. Just give me one living child. Please, please stop killing my little girls._ A voice inside her pleaded and it was then she realized the body she had been experiencing, the crushing grief, and all the conflicting pain filled sensations weren't hers. She recognized the voice then. It was the woman speaking the prayer and with her now she could understand it. She felt a warm feeling of empathy and a duller pang of grief for this woman. She could sense a restrained sort of love and hope tied up in the small statues in front of the woman and in the future the woman pleaded for. She wanted to smooth away the hurts and fulfill the woman's one mournful wish.

She felt a sucking sensation on her back and gasped without any physical reaction. Her essence was being shaken from the body and she was losing its senses as she was pulled back by the darkness. For just one moment as she was dragged back by the darknesses curling fingers she was separated from the woman, but sight still lingered.

She found herself looking at a beautiful Japanese woman face shuttered with grief, her dark golden eyes pools of deep pain, and her long silky black hair pulled back in an simple hairstyle. Beside her was a man waiting, tall, and quiet with black hair and gray eyes. His face was more stoic but still lined with a mirroring grief as he looked down at the statues, one hand resting gently on the base of the woman's back. She felt the tiniest whisper of his grief then, just as potent but the quiet hidden kind in comparison to the woman's loud screaming to the world.

And then she was back in the darkness and shaking, but not shaking at the sudden loss of her senses. The dull numbness that had been comforting was now suffocating and horrifying. She struggled but felt no movement there was nothing but her thoughts and the inability to connect to a body. The darkness frantically wrapped itself around her vibrating with a sort of lullaby and now having experienced living senses again she realized what she had been categorizing as sensations were simply thoughts.

It took a long time, far longer than since she'd first arrived for her to calm down. When she did though she was curled up in the darkness and wishing she could sob.

 _I am sorry, I forget how overwhelming it is for human dead to touch the living. I only sometimes allow souls like yourself a glimpse._ The darkness said allowing its regret and slow moving affection to wash over her.

 _Souls like me?_ She wondered mind clearing and suddenly terrifyingly grasping at the knowledge that the darkness had long brushed away. _I'm dead aren't I?_

The darkness pulsed with sympathy, cradling her but it sent a feeling of acknowledgement that confirmed her thought.

She was dead. She supposed she should be more surprised or angry or something. Truthfully, even with the darkness's distraction she had felt the knowledge in her, just buried. She also had the sense that the life she had left had not been filled with happiness or warmth. There was a reason Memories made her hurt so, there had to be.

 _You are almost fully healed, fully wiped clean and ready to re-enter the cycle of rebirth. Sometimes though souls on edge, with a deep loneliness from their past lives will hear the prayers that pass through here. Sating your curiosity is something I allow if I suspect it will help your recovery._

It was the longest coherent thought the darkness had ever given her and she was stunned. She was far more used to the communication of feelings then words. The darkness answered her with amusement and then continued.

 _I had not expected you to resonate with her so deeply._ There was a soft apology and regret. _I am not omnipotent and if I had known I would have not allowed it._

Something in her protested at that and he last conscious feeling returned. _Can you help her? Can you give them a child?_

The darkness sent her a new wave of affection at that tinged with regret. _You are good to worry for them, but sadly I cannot. I shepherd the dead, allow them to heal within my halls, but I do not grant life. That is in the hands of someone far wiser, far more powerful, and far more cruel._

She felt disappointment at that and an echoing grief mixed in. Then she felt the darkness hesitate and felt it offering up a possibility.

 _I could release you though, just a little early, in that part of the woman's branch of rebirth. It is not exactly where you should be, but until you are fully wiped clean you are not sorted. It is simply rare for to jump universes, not impossible._ The darkness grew somber, anxious almost. _You would have to be released immediately to have a chance though. It would be a painful process and your Memories would not be fully gone. They would hurt you and make you different. You are not of that world and you would always know it. There is no guarantee They would even allow you to be born to the woman._

She weighed her instinctive fear of her Memories against her desire to help. She had the oddest feeling she had never been able to do something significant before, something to genuinely help. She wanted that the ability to do something important to wipe away the loneliness and grief in someone else that she felt pushing close beyond the darkness's curtain inside her. She could what though, start anew without that pain. With a new beginning completely. The prayer whispered on the edge of her mind.

 _Do it_ , she thought firm and determined feeling suddenly confident and strong with a choice made.

 _As you desire_ , the darkness said and gently picked her up and _moved_.

The next moments were sensations of color that wasn't color, of light that was the purest of its kind, of being pulled thin and woven as a new, slightly frayed but strong thread into a tapestry. She felt her Memories bubbling up closer and closer as the darkness let her slip away.

 _Be brave, be kind,_ the darkness wished for her not ordered.

And then she was screaming into life.

. . .

During the early morning, a daughter was born to Ito Shiori and Ryuunosuke as the morning glories uncurled to her newborn scream. It was in the warmth of Hi no Kuni summer at the family estate surrounded by their anxious relatives eager to see the heir's first child. She only screamed for once before she went silent eyes opened unusually focused for a baby. They all took this as a good sign and moved onto the celebration.

"Asagao," a tired Shiori decided voice strained as she peered into those almost purple-blue eyes. "For her magnificent eyes."

Ryuunosuke, curled around her agreed looking down at his wife and child with obvious affection.

Little Asagao looked up at both of them and promptly fell asleep. All around them Konohagakure was tense with the ongoing war, but here there was a moment of peace.

* * *

 **AN: For everyone longing for a civilian character Asagao is your girl. Mostly because people kept mentioning their desire for one in reference to** _The Strange Child_ **and I wanted one too.**


End file.
